Author
Topic: First Caerphilly (Read 1629 times)

This is a Mary Karlin recipe that I thought I try after seeing Tiarella's beautiful caerphilly with chives (decided to copy her chive and annatto additions). This was the second time I made up a 4 gal. batch and I wanted to try something new (for me) and do a "tandem" press.

Picture comments: Pic (1) is a prototype paddle I made for the square steam table pans. I've tried a lot of different techniques to take some of the drudgery (and time) out of stirring and this has worked the best. Pics (2-5): While this is the first time I've tried a tandem pressing I've been using the clear molds for a month or so. The molds along with the black followers really help me to visualize what's going on under the "sheets" so to speak as can be seen in next to last pic. Finally, I took a time from someone else's post here and did the final pressing with no cloth. I was delighted to see how smooth and symmetrical they were. I like to coat my cheese with coconut oil and the smooth surface should help get a good thin-but-uniform coating.

Hi John,since we were posting about this cheese at the same time I guess you read my post. I really enjoyed making this cheese a lot but I thought it was amazing to see everything developing on the rind and how easy it was to make it into a clean looking cheese again. Just brush all the scary things away. But I usually prefer the smelly scary rind above the actual cheese. Therefore I would not coat it but that's me. And i really do not know what I am talking about.Best regards,Hans

since we were posting about this cheese at the same time I guess you read my post.

Hansadutta, yours are always the first posts I read! You are the "crazy Dutchman" (crazy like crazy good). I've got an old friend in Maastricht (I was there some years ago) and I just found out that my company actually makes the famed Kadova molds that make such beautiful goudas. It's a small world!

Tiarella: This is a press I designed and made. When I first got interested in cheese making I made a Dutch-style press with some walnut I had on hand. It worked good but was big and bulky so I challenged myself to come up with a design that (1) maintained constant pressure over the vertical distance the cheese compresses (as opposed to some conventional "spring" presses) and (2) can be quickly disassembled to store. It's essentially an articulated toggle press made from walnut and Russian birch that uses rubber bands instead of metal spings. To increase pressure you just add rubber bands (each one adds about 1 to 10 lbs. per band depending on the size of the band).

Thanks Bobby. I used a round pot for a long time until I read Gianiclis Caldwell's book "Mastering Artisan Cheesemaking". There on page 106 she talked about how much she liked to use a square or rectangular pan. Not knowing anything about steam table pans except that I see them on buffets, I did some checking. At the time I was doing 2 gal. batches and bought a 2/3 size pan with cover from Katom for less than $25. Later I bought a full size pan which is perfect for larger batches up to 4 gal.

I've settled on using an electric griddle for heating. Would love to have one of Sailor's induction hot plates, but I've learned where to set the controller to get x degrees temperature increase in y minutes. To distribute the heat better I use a ceramic floor tile between griddle surface and the pot. The tile also gives enough height so you can use a griddle that's smaller than your griddle (I do 4 gal. batches using a "regular" sized Presto griddle).

I made the molds and followers myself. I earlier had purchased a pretty (and pretty expensive @ $99) stainless steel cylindrical mold. Used it a lot but because I was at the time doing 2 gal. batches and just didn't need that 7" height - made redressing the cheese a hassle. It also made distributing the curds more difficult so some of my cheeses came out higher on one side. Thought a clear mold would let you see the curds better. Added the black HDPE follower to help check levelness. I've now use a short mold (4.5") for 2 gal. and a tall (7.5") for 4 gal.